By Thomas Watkins
The Fresno Bee
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The police chief Wednesday called the fatal shooting of an unarmed man “highly tragic” but said the officers who shot him may have been within policy.
Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said department policy prohibits officers from shooting at moving cars, unless they believe their lives to be in immediate jeopardy.
“In this case, we have that,” Seabrooks told a news conference in the Los Angeles suburb.
Still, she cautioned the investigation into what happened had not yet been completed.
“Please do keep in mind, that we have not conducted fully the administrative investigation to determine if in fact there are any policy violations or not,” she said.
Michael Byoune, 19, died early Sunday after two officers fired into a car in which he was riding.
According to police, two officers on patrol together heard gunfire coming from a parking lot by a hamburger stand. As they approached the scene, they saw a man running, then get into the back of a slowly moving car.
As the officers pulled into the parking lot, the car was driving toward them and they believed gunfire was coming from the vehicle, Seabrooks said.
Officer Brian Ragan, who was driving, fired four rounds through his own windshield. He then got out the squad car and continued firing from behind a nearby wall. Ragan has been on the force more than five years.
Ragan’s patrol partner, Roman Fernandez, a rookie officer with less than a year on the force, also fired several rounds, Seabrooks said, without specifying where Fernandez was when he fired his weapon.
Byoune was killed. The driver, Larry White, was shot in the leg. Police said a second passenger, Christopher Larkins, the man who had jumped into the car, was unhurt, but his attorney said a bullet grazed him close to an eye.
Both officers are on paid administrative leave. The Police Department is conducting two probes into the shooting and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office also is investigating.
Police played a recording of radio talk around the time of the shooting. An unidentified officer can be heard saying shots have been fired and he saw someone running. He sounds increasingly agitated as the recording continues, saying at one point, “Shots fired, 1199,” using the police code for an officer needing help.
The officers were driving a police car that did not have lights on its roof, and initial accounts show no patrol lights were flashing as the officers pulled into the parking lot. Officials also said the officers apparently did not verbally identify themselves before shooting.
Attorney Carl Douglas, who represents Byoune’s family and the two other men who were in the car, said the shooting reflected a breakdown in police training and that his understanding of events was not the same as the police account.
“I have a version of the facts that differs somewhat from the version you have just heard,” Douglas said without elaborating.
Byoune’s half brother Steven Bertrand, 33, said the family was struggling to accept the official account.
“I can find a lot of problems with what they said,” Bertrand said. “It doesn’t make any sense, they know they were wrong.”
Bertrand described Byoune as a quiet but playful man. He said the burger stand where the shooting took place is a popular nighttime meeting spot for Inglewood teens.
“He was cool to get along with, he had a lot of friends,” Bertrand said.
He said the family is trying to raise money for a funeral.
Byoune’s cousin John Benoit, 29, said Byoune was a “big teddy bear” who wanted to be a musician and a chef.
The police chief has previously described the men’s car as coming at the officers, but the executive director of the nonprofit Police Assessment Resource Center, Merrick Bobb, said he was puzzled why no one had been charged with a crime if the car was threatening.
“I have questions about why the DA did not press charges against the others involved in the incident if indeed the car was posing a danger of imminent death or injury to the officers,” Bobb said. “In my view there is a high burden to justify all the risks and why they felt justified to shoot at the vehicle.”
Shooting from or at a moving car has in recent years been the subject of considerable discussion among police departments, Bobb said.
Several departments have amended their policies so car shootings are a “disfavored tactic,” as killing or wounding a driver often causes a car to keep moving without control instead of stopping.
“It’s not a particularly smart thing to do,” Bobb said. “It’s not a particularly effective means of stopping a vehicle.”
Copyright 2008 The Fresno Bee